He seemed in a friendly if somewhat covert mood. “I found the leak, you know. The one to the press the night Heller was seized. I had a man being followed. He didn’t suspect it. It took a lot of work but we finally saw him and a reporter bump into each other on the street. They didn’t pass anything but it was enough. “The reporter was Blat Mortif. He wasn’t the one who wrote the article but, of course, reporters have friends. You’ll never guess who leaked it. The Knife Section man that acted the part of the Fleet orderly, the one that was so clumsy he let Heller break his wrist. Of course, he denied it. But you can’t trust anybody these days. They’re all against us, plotting, plotting, plotting.
“So last night we had Blat Mortif picked up and he denied everything so we had to pick up his wife. He finally broke down. So the Knife Section man, the reporter and his wife were all executed. I knew you were concerned about it so I thought I had better tell you. One has to get rid of traitors and people who talk too much. They’re riffraff anyway.”
I not only had not been concerned, I had completely forgotten about it. Further, I knew of many ways the press could have learned of Heller’s mission: even Fleet Intelligence knew. And also, the press had never mentioned any kidnapping. I wondered why Lombar was telling me. But then Lombar lives in a secret world of his own.
We were not flying very fast. We were not very high. He had not even turned on internal air. The green, long-shadowed moonlight turned the world below into a weird panorama.
Abruptly, Lombar, a sort of greenish shadow close by, began a sort of singsong lecture, like an Academy professor. “Any successful revolution or successful coup d’etat requires that the revolutionaries possess an operating or supply base beyond the reach of the forces they seek to overthrow. Without such a base, one cannot overthrow an existing regime.”
Yes, yes. That was elementary. If a revolutionary did not have a point beyond the knowledge or control of the regime they were attacking, a place from which they could secretly operate, a revolution normally failed. Textbook.
“You,” said Lombar, dropping his professorial role and becoming harsh, “are now in full control of that base and its supplies. You must not fail in your duty to me.”
I was a little heartened. I thought I knew now what this eerie and secret night ride was all about: a briefing to me as a mission handler that could not be overheard. I knew already that Blito-P3 was the unwitting and secret base outside the control of Voltar. I had always thought it an amusing role for a stupid and primitive planet. It had always been a source of private amusement to me. The dumb twits.
Lombar’s hands darted to the automatic position switches and there was a series of clicks which cut in the complex navigational systems of “the gun” so that she would go to and hold on exact coordinates. Freed of flying, he leaned back.
The gun steadied down, the engines dropped to an inaudible pitch. I knew where we were now.
Only a few miles away and a few thousand feet below lay Palace City. Visibly, it is simply a hole in the landscape. The mountain behind it and the vast array of palaces are enwrapped in the effects of a gigantic space warp. The black hole in the mountain makes it invisible and this in turn causes Palace City to be invisible. Shielded against unwanted radiation, the whole area is thirteen minutes in the future.
It is utterly impregnable. Nobody can attack it. It simply isn’t there. For nearly a hundred and twenty-five thousand years, it had defied all assaults. You can’t shoot up a not-there-in-now.
Many stellar empires hide their central government on asteroids to put them out of reach of enemy and popular attack. It has its points but you can trace ships to it. Voltar’s Emperor could not be touched by any combat means ever evolved. It made the Voltarian Confederacy one of the strongest governments in any galactic history.
There lay the nothingness, surrounded all about by a moonlit landscape. It always made me nervous. It wasn’t wholly that that mountain could blow up someday when its mass imbalanced too far, it was that it represented such awesome might within its secret glove.
Lombar was fiddling with the gun’s fire controls. Even a weapon as heavy as this ship carried was of no avail here. But his twitching fingers increased my unease.
“See that?” said Lombar. And I was thankful when he took his hand off the weapon triggers and gestured. Of course, there was nothing to see. “The Lords there in their fine robes are plotting against me.”
I could agree with that. The Apparatus must make them quite nervous at times even though they thought of it as their own tool.
Lombar swept his hand in a wider gesture. “The people of this and every other Voltarian planet are just lying in wait to rise up and kill me.”
Oh, I could surely agree with that. The way the Apparatus hated them and abducted them and slaughtered them, they undoubtedly were lying in wait.
Lombar sighed, an executive with many burdens. “So, I know you will agree, Soltan, that the only possible solution is to seize control of Palace City and the power of the throne. And then, with that, properly use the authority to slaughter the people.”
I knew these were his plans. I had always thought them a bit drastic.
He must have sensed my reservations. “I am the only one brilliant enough and strong-willed enough to take over. The Lords are weak. The people are riffraff. It is my duty.”
He nodded, firmly agreeing with himself. Then, “So the problem is to take over Palace City.”
Nobody had ever done it. It was considered impossible.
Lombar was fishing in his tunic pocket. “But we have our supply base on Blito-P3. And we have our weapons.”
He took out a bottle of pills and dropped it on the gun control ledge in front of him. I knew the bottle. Its label said:
IG BARBEN, PHARMACEUTICAL
NEW YORK
The eerie Voltar moonlight glinted on the label so far from home. Methedrine, a powerful amphetamine.
He took out a cellophane package of white powder. Turkish heroin. By its number, part of the last Blixo shipment, now safely stored in Spiteos. The moonlight made it greenish, like dried venom.
He gestured to them with his hand. “These are our artillery.” He smiled. “And violent ammunition it is. The higher nervous systems of Voltar populations react to it five times over and above the Earth reaction.”
He turned to me, his face very serious. “So that is why you must keep Blito-P3 under control. You must keep the ammunition coming. These weapons take a while to work. Months, years. We can keep firing and we can wait.
“Above all, we must maintain our monopoly. Chemists here might learn to synthesize this. In producing heroin, the basic morphine is very garish to grow and easy to spot. But still there is a danger we could lose the monopoly before we have addicted the Lords and robbed the people of their will to resist. I have other plans to handle this here, but you are going to make sure the Blito-P3 base is secure to us.”
A pleading note crept into his voice. All this meant much to him, Lombar, the slum-raised sewer rat, any Lord rank far beyond his reach. “When I am Emperor, you, Soltan, will be the head of the Apparatus.”
It made me uneasy. Just to listen to this talk could bring torture and execution. And the eerie moonlight made it worse.
Then he got serious. “This upstart (bleepard) Heller threatened all that. By a stupid fluke, he got into the scene. He doesn’t even suspect what he threatens. But whatever happens, you must make certain that he does not succeed in tampering in any way with Blito-P3!”
The mention of Heller had brought out his aggressiveness. He glared at the invisibility of Palace City. “Those blundering idiots down there are stupid enough to place their confidence in Heller! Little do they know that I can outfight, outfly a dozen Hellers!”
Before I could get truly alarmed, he began to laugh. It didn’t have any amusement in it. He turned to me and patted my knee. “That was a terrific trick, Soltan. Ah, you are a sly one. I can choose men well. Only you would ever have th
ought of loosing that rotten whore on him, the Countess Krak!”
I went cold. He knew!
“Clever, clever. Keeping him under control by using a murdering prostitute. Almost as good as some of the things I work out. There was every chance she’d kill him. Too bad she hasn’t.” He laughed over it.
Who had told him? Snelz! It must be Snelz! It made me feel surrounded by spies.
But Lombar was plunging on. “However, if she hasn’t killed him by his blastoff tomorrow, he won’t have long to run anyway.” He fished out a sheaf of papers. “As you already know, I have allocated to you our two best agents on Blito-P3, Raht and Terb. They are to shadow him at all times. And here is a project written for Raht to do at once. As soon as you land. It concerns the identity Heller will be given. I can think of a few ideas myself—somewhat more refined than Countess Krak ones.”
I opened the sheets. It was not easy to read in the moonlight coming through the windscreen. But what I saw stood my hair on end!
Blito-P3 is the only place anyone ever heard of where a gutter bum and criminal can rise by normal social processes to a point of absolute planetary control. It was probably this fact which had attracted Lombar to it in the first place, which had caused him to study all past surveys and its cultural and social patterns and even introduce them so thoroughly into his own work. On Earth, one man and his family had risen to such a position. He controlled the planet’s energy companies, he controlled its drug companies, he controlled its finances and he controlled many other things including, to all intents and purposes, its governments. We ourselves, although he didn’t know it, did business with him. His name was Delbert John Rockecenter. It was one of our operating maxims that we never upset anything connected with him.
And the birth certificate and credentials which Lombar was ordering Raht to procure were in the name of Delbert John Rockecenter, JUNIOR!
My Gods, this was taking risks!
Lombar must have seen my face. It amused him. “The difference between myself and other men is that I can very accurately predict what will really happen. The instant Heller shows up in the United States calling himself Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior, it will start a commotion. The name is too well known. The big one will hear of it instantly and have Heller put behind bars immediately. He has the power and the will to do things. Heller won’t get ten steps into the society before he is nabbed. Into a penitentiary and we’re rid of Heller. Maybe if he’s crazy enough to try to tell them he’s an extraterrestrial, they’ll put him in an insane asylum for life. It can’t miss.”
I understood it then. I’d have to be very sure Heller carried no other identity.
“So you have that,” said Lombar. “Now, there’s the matter of a crew for that tug. I said I’d handle that. And I certainly have. We were lucky. There were several Fleet subofficers on the galactic run. They were, of course, piloting and engineering the big Fleet freighters with the Will-be Was drives. They mutinied and stole a ship intending to go pirating. The Fleet patrols caught them and tried them. But just before they were executed some of our people did a body substitution.
“There are five of them, a captain, two pilots and two engineers, plenty for that tug. They are a race that calls themselves Antimancos—exiled long ago from Manco for ritual murders. They hate the Fleet. They hate Manco. And oh, will they hate Heller! I’ll see you’re told more about them. So there is your uncorruptible crew.”
He sat for a while, staring at the invisible hole of Palace City and just about the time I thought he had told me everything, he looked at his watch, frowned and began again.
“Now earlier, when I first heard about that (bleeped) tug, I ordered two warplanes to duty at the Earth base. The four pilots will not be under your orders. They will have their own orders. If that tug gets loose there or if Heller tries to use it locally, our planes have orders to shoot it down. Those planes will be arriving there shortly. So that takes care of that.”
I felt very cold. The moonlight was cold. His face was cold now. I hoped I wasn’t aboard that tug when they showed up. Our ship had no guns or defenses. It was just a tug.
“There’s only a couple things more,” said Lombar. I knew they wouldn’t be good, but I wasn’t prepared for what they really were.
He fixed me with a look. “If, at any time, it looks like Heller is going to succeed and you have no other way to stop him, you are to disregard any consequences and,” he pointed a finger at me and said the next words slowly, “you are to murder him!”
His attention had gone back to Palace City. He seemed to be waiting for something, but, of course, there was nothing there to wait for: it was just a zone of nothing.
He glanced at his watch and then turned to me again. “There is one final thing.” His tone was very unfriendly. “I have given secret instructions to someone in your vicinity. You will never suspect who it is. And those instructions are this: if you fail to handle Blito-P3, if you fail to keep our ammunition coming, if Heller gets loose and messes things up, if, in any way, you play me false, that someone has explicit orders to murder you!”
I felt like the moonlight had just turned into ice.
But Lombar was again looking at his watch. Then he held up a finger to me. Suddenly the most beatific expression came over his face. “There it was! Oh, there it was! Didn’t you hear it?”
I had heard nothing. There was just the empty hole of Palace City out there, just the hateful moonlight. The ship was even soundproof.
I must have looked a trifle frantic. Lombar said insistently, “The voice, the voice! I brought you here so you could hear the voice!” He sat up, listening intently. “There! There it is again: ‘Lombar Hisst! Come be Emperor! The destiny of Voltar pleads for you to take the Crown!’”
He sank back in relief. “Now that you have heard it, you know that everything I have had to do is true, is destined. I am so glad you were here to vouch for it.”
A conviction drove through me like a blastgun bolt. Like the pieces of a puzzle spinning about on a board and suddenly assembling, all my experience with Lombar Hisst and tonight came together in a single vivid fact. All the psychology textbook psychopathic symptoms of a paranoid schizophrenic, complete with megalomania and tonight, aural hallucinations, were there.
I was scared spitless!
Lombar Hisst was insane!
I was under the control of a complete lunatic!
And there was no possible way to escape it!
PART ELEVEN
Chapter 6
I actually was a pretty sick Soltan Gris when the Apparatus guard bus dropped me at my office. It was very late. I knew I ought to be packing and getting moved in aboard the tug for blastoff. But I sat at my desk for nearly half an hour, just looking into nothingness.
Somehow, I felt, there must be some mistake. Nothing could be quite as horrible as being the pawn of a madman. With sudden inspiration, I dug some of my psychology textbooks out of what I call my “Carrot Hole,” a code name for a cavity under the planking.
For another half-hour I pored over the Earth texts. Schizophrenia, I verified, is schizei: “to split” plus phren: “mind.” It was defined as a split or detachment from reality. Paranoia is a chronic psychosis, characterized by well-rationalized delusions of persecution or of grandeur. Megalomania often takes the form of a desire to rule the world. Aural hallucinations means hearing voices that aren’t there. These terms, excepting the last, are called the Hitler syndrome: Hitler was a defunct military ruler on Earth. He and several of his chieftains were labeled in the texts as paranoid schizophrenics to explain their genocidal practices (they worked hard to kill off whole races).
Yes! I had the terms right. Aural hallucinations was the right label for hearing voices. So Lombar Hisst was insane.
It brought no comfort at all.
If he started taking those amphetamines, a drug called speed, and particularly the heart-shaped orange tablets called methedrine, that I knew were in that bottle he had displayed, he r
eally would go crazy!
I sat there for another hour, glooming.
What could I do?
Nothing!
No, not nothing!
If I didn’t get going and push this mission through to the end, I would be a dead man. That had been made too vivid to be mistaken.
The realization alone made me leap up. It was way past midnight. I hastily rushed down the hill to my room to pack. I had even forgotten Ske had been outside the office with the airbus until he, alerted no doubt by the way I came crashing out of my office, took off and landed in the side courtyard.
Frantically, I began to scoop up things and throw them into bags. I was about to stuff the Heller monitors in with old broken canisters when I realized I had to get a grip on myself. I carefully packed them in a disguised case marked Fragile Heirlooms.